Breathe Into Me
by emiiko
Summary: Edward wanted to touch her, sink into her, run away with her, and be like her.
**Breathe Into Me**

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The taste of nicotine smoldered over his chapped, broken lips, burning a hole in his lungs. He tossed the butt of the cigarette into the ocean, destroying something beautiful, vast and endless.

He'd done this before, smoked until he couldn't speak. The last time he'd done this, Jasper was by his side, inhaling right along with him. There was no Jasper to reminisce with, just the chalky pebbles of sand, a shaky breeze and desperate waves crashing to the shore. Jasper's arms were probably wrapped around Edward's ex-girlfriend.

Edward tilted the pack of Newport's open again, shaking a cigarette out into his hand. It didn't take him long to light it; it was a practiced art he'd developed at a young age. Bella used to smoke Marlboro lights with delicate fingers and pouty lips. Edward remembers those things — the bad and the good. The way a cigarette could dangle from her lips like she owned it, not the other way around. Everything was like that with Bella. Nothing and no one owned her.

Edward dipped his fingers into the sand, looking only briefly up at the star-filled sky, letting the cigarette hang from the corner of his mouth as he breathed in it's unhealthy ruggedness. There was nothing left for him.

Angela seemed like a faded, tainted memory. He often woke up from nightmares about her, her lips on his skin, bare breasted, teasing him with her fingernails or she'd be screaming that he was using her to remember Bella and either spectrum was just as horrible. He didn't want to see her or be around her. Now those lips that had touched his, were coursing their way down Jasper's neck, in hopes of hurting him as he had hurt her. Jealousy wouldn't have been the right word to express his feelings. Numb would've worked better, not that anyone really cared about what he felt.

There was nothing left for him, no one left to escape into.

"You know she still thinks about you," Bella said appearing next to him like magic. She's always doing that, he thinks. Her dark hair lays across her shoulders, glowing in the moonlight. That maroon sweater he loved so much, covering her milky skin. Edward grunted, smiling only a little bit.

"You're still beautiful," he whispered, ignoring her comment about Angela, blowing smoke out from between his lips. It dangled in the air around them, around him.

She smiled, that perfect smile he knew so well. The one in all the pictures he'd taken of her at the beach, in his bedroom, her bedroom, everywhere. The ones he'd put away after he and Angela kissed, the ones he tried to say goodbye to but stuffed under his bed in a shoebox full of memories.

The notes she used to write him in between class with doodles of the teachers that annoyed her and a heart by her name, were crumbled from unfolding and folding again, over and over again in that box. He tried to wipe them away, wipe her away. She would apply cherry lip-gloss and leave lip prints all over the blue lined paper with scribbled words about their weekend together. If he was lucky, he got two a day. Those were the days Bella skipped gym and hid in the library with Angela.

Bella watched him in the way an old lover does, with a certain magnetism, wanting to drink him in before it's all over and done with. Edward could feel her jeans against his own, like a knife to his insides. He couldn't be sure if he'd passed out on the sand, dreaming, or hallucinating, because he missed her so much. He wanted to tell her not to touch him and to be cliché and tell her he would die if she touched him but she does anyway as if reading his mind.

"I miss you," Bella squeezed all her life force, all she'd been given for that moment and pressed her hand onto his knee, resting it there like old times; the days when they had skinny dipped in the ocean after drinking way too much and held onto each other to keep their balance. He would always kiss her first, under a pregnant moon with his wet fingers entangled in the strands of her hair.

She always tasted like chocolate and alcohol, leaving him with the notion the two always went together. He couldn't have liquor filled chocolates anymore. The mere idea of picking expensive chocolates out of a box to mix with anything that involved alcohol still made him physically ill. That was Bella – Bella and him, chocolate and alcohol.

"I miss you more," Edward whispered while he pulled at the freshly lit cigarette in between his lips and threw it into the ocean. It disappeared behind a foamy, washed up wave. Bella tilted her head to stare at him pensively making him uneasy. He turned to look at her. She didn't look like a ghost or even a vision. She just looked like Bella, his Bella, before the cancer took her away. Eventually she'd be gone because she never could stay no matter how many dreams or hallucinations he had about her.

"Do you remember our first kiss?" Bella smiled, looking up at the sky. She never really did understand Angela's fascination with the sky until she died. Its endless, infinite, amount of possibilities surrounding the universe, surely making every human being feel like a small speck in a life force much bigger than just them. Bella tried not to give it much thought but she missed Angela's passionate lectures about which star was what and what the mythology on each one was. Being dead didn't teach her much about those things.

"Jasper dragged me to Roy's party and then he left me the second he saw Alice. I was gonna head out for a smoke, but then I saw you dancing in the living room," Edward answered thinking back to that day. "And you in that dress," his eyes glazed over with the memory filling him up.

"You always liked blue on me," she turned her head to look at him. Her hair swung along her shoulders. If she'd been able to touch any other part of him, she would've kissed him with her cold, dead lips just to go back remembering what he tasted like, felt like. "I just wanted to kiss you," her voice was soft and it quivered as if she were suddenly cold or losing her cool. Edward wanted to touch her, sink into her, run away with her, and be like her.

"And you did," Edward said smiling at the memory of their first kiss. She had walked towards him with a purpose and shoved him into the wall. She pressed her lips to his, twisting their lips open, kissing until they were dizzy from lack of oxygen. "Definitely in the top five," he grinned.

Bella screeched. "It better be above that one you and Angela had on the boardwalk, even if that was kind of hot," she responded with a small wink. Her hand was still placed softly, delicately on his knee and he resisted every urge to entwine his fingers with hers. She watched his eyes the way they gazed heavily on her fingertips. There were certain things she'd been told she could do, say goodbye, touch him with one hand, and then leave — fading away into the abyss. "Go ahead," she urged him on reading his thoughts.

Edward moved his right hand from the ground where it had been picking up sand. He let it fall in between his fingertips. She had visited him before, quite often after her death and then the visits became less frequent. Now, he knew deep down, this was the last time. Their fingers entwined flawlessly, almost as if they'd never fallen apart. Bella was surprisingly warmer than he'd anticipated, which only made him that much more sad with the knowledge, that soon, goodbye would come. Her nails were red and he would've asked her how or why but the thoughts skipped in his brain like a broken record.

"That was different," Edward responded to her earlier comment. He waited for her to say something but she just stared at their fingertips, entangled. "Angela and I…" he trailed off feeling the sadness of the predicament of his life drip forward into his thoughts. He squeezed her hand and it felt so real that he was sure the instant she was gone, he'd break down into the mess he was slowly but surely becoming.

"She kissed you first," Bella offered into the open air. "I always knew she had a crush on you," she twisted her lips into a grin but he could see a certain amount of sorrow on her beautiful, fragile face. She didn't say anything else about Angela and him…maybe it was too painful for her to think about. It could've been that she didn't have much time left and wanted to say the things she didn't get a chance to say.

"Do you know what I regret the most? You, Edward, were the best thing in my life and I wasn't brave enough. I wasn't brave enough to tell you that I loved you too. And I'm sorry I never said the words, but I want you to know that I love you...I always will," and she offered him another smile but it hurt her too much. She could see the numb expression in his face. The way his eyes stared hopelessly into the sand as if something would sprout up to explain to him all the things that had gone terribly wrong in his life.

When she was alive, loving him was second nature. It was easy to sustain inside of her but she'd never really told him, never uttered the words out loud because it gave him too much power and Bella hated feeling vulnerable. In death, loving him was hard, like gutting her insides and laying them on a table where they couldn't be reached and his insides were a part of her, breaking and foaming at the mouth but she couldn't reach any of it. She couldn't touch him the way she used to or place all that unspoken love into a heavy kiss where saliva dripped and spilled over them as they squirmed under the others' touch.

Those days were over and Edward was just as dead inside as she was, except he kept breathing. Saying goodbye to her parents and Angela had been easy, but Edward was making her forget all perspective of time and gravity.

"I know," Edward ran the skin of his thumb along the side of her jaw as he talked. "I know, Bella," he said again, accenting her name while his tongue hit the roof of his mouth. He watched as her knees tilted upwards and out of the sand. Bella turned to face him, her hair fluttering in the wind behind her and then into her face, almost covering her soulful eyes.

Their fingers parted as she placed the palm of her hands into the sand, pushing herself closer to him and yet the closer Bella got, the farther away she felt. He couldn't stroke her fingers anymore or feel the warmth that had surprisingly penetrated through her to him like some small little miracle of life and death.

"I don't have a lot of time left Edward," Bella said loudly trying to emphasize the point. But alive she was always loud and obnoxious, making everyone pay attention to her even if later she'd complain about never getting a moment to herself. That was what he loved about her. Now it was what he almost hated about her if only because the noise would fade and he'd be left with the sound of the waves crashing and the lighter in his pocket clapping opened and closed. Edward sighed, closing his eyes.

"I'll pay for this," she expected, tossing her hands in the air and throwing her legs back into the sand.

The sweater he loved so much perched against his chest and he opened his eyes just in time to see her eyelids flutter. Their lips locked, magically combining both their sadness, death, and longing. No tongues erupted from their mouths just lips intermingling, like an open love letter to the heart. The palms of her hands were hot along his cheeks as he closed his eyes tightly, savoring the taste of her. Bella tasted just the way he remembered her, chocolate and cherry lipgloss mixed with nicotine and vodka. A gush of wind struck past them, knocking him down and her lips away from his.

"Don't forget me." Edward heard her whisper before he opened his eyes to find her gone but her scent lingered in the cold midnight air.

He reached for the pack of cigarettes that had been resting to his side and found that they were gone, no doubt under a pile of sand somewhere. He couldn't help but wonder if she'd taken them away with her to wherever it was she was staying now. The sky, probably, resting on some darkened, dusty cloud with her legs dangling over it glancing at the stars or maybe she was going to all the places they dreamed of visiting. Edward liked that idea. Bella was a free spirit and even death couldn't strip away her independence. He imagined her floating through the space continuum and only stopping for the places and things she wanted. At least that's how Edward imagined she'd spend her time before he joined her.

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End file.
